Magnetic door and drawer seals are well known. They provide an almost hermetic seal for doors and drawers used in commercial and consumer refrigerators and freezers.
A typical prior art “magnetic drawer seal,” which as used herein should be construed herein to include a magnetic door seal, has a base member affixed to the outermost edge of the drawer front, a flexible air-filled elongated tube or bellows attached to or formed with the base member and an elongated magnet or magnetic strip coupled to, or formed with the bellows. When the magnet or magnetic strip approaches ferrous material on or part of a cabinet, magnetic force holds the drawer closed and urges the bellows material, as well as material surrounding the magnet, against the cabinet face, sealing the cabinet.
While prior art magnetic drawer seals are generally effective, it has been observed that under certain conditions, prior art magnetic drawer seals are unable to hold self-closing drawers closed, when a the drawer moves from an open to closed position. When heavy or heavily-loaded self-closing drawers first strikes a cabinet, the self-closing drawers often bounces off the cabinet containing the cabinet bounces open and stays open. It is believed that the drawer “rebound” or re-opening is caused by a combination factors. Material from which the seal is formed must be flexible; it is therefore likely that the material compresses upon impact and springs back to its original shape creating a force opposite in direction to the magnetic force provided by the magnet. Air inside the bellows is likely compressed by the drawer's impact and expands after the initial impact creating a force that acts against the force provided by the magnet. Regardless of the factors, magnetic door seals that rebound open after they are closed by a drawer closing mechanism waste energy and can also cause wheel-mounted cabinets to roll around on their own. A magnetic drawer seal that seals as prior art seals do but which also prevents self-closing drawer rebound would be an improvement over the prior art.